Three Explorers
by wackywhateleys
Summary: Randall and Henry's friendship, as told through the life and times of a very special little robot. (Oneshot.)


It had started out as a shiny, new, attractive thing, but it didn't have any feelings or history attached to it. That changed as soon as Randall saw it on the shelf. At six years old, he wanted everything, and this was no exception. He fell in love with the toy robot immediately, and the only way to get him out of the shop all day was to give it to him. So Randall got to take the robot home, and he played with it every day for a week, and then kept it on his bedside table and guarded it fiercely. Sometimes he still took it down and around the house, but mostly he just told anyone who would listen that it was an actual robot that had come from the moon and now it was his friend and was protecting his treasure collection for him. (His treasure collection was a box of trash and shiny rocks.)

The other boy in the house, a servant named Henry, liked to stare up at the robot while he was playing in Randall's room. He wondered what it was like to have such a good friend.

Henry liked the idea of the robot friend so much that eventually he gathered the courage to take it down, and carefully play with it when no one else was around. He didn't feel guilty at all—until he was found out. But Master Randall gave it to him.

And the robot changed hands, and Henry held it close, and from that day on it was Henry's bedside table the robot slept on. The robot would travel all over in Henry's arms, while Randall eagerly showed the two of them how to find loads and loads of treasure all over the house. Together, they went on fabulous adventures.

There were perilous pyramids and undead mummies in the kitchen.  
There were weird wilds with plants that hadn't even been named yet in the yard.

There were relics just waiting to be unearthed under the rosebushes.

And even though the maids kept shooing them out of the pyramid, and the beasts in the wilds were mostly Dalston, and the relics under the rosebushes were remarkably hard to find, no one's enthusiasm for adventure was diminished; the expeditions went on and on. As primary school ended, they started going into the woods, and soon after Randall turned 13 (and so did the robot), they made their first trip out to the Norwell Wall. All three of them: the robot was hidden away in Henry's backpack.

Randall and Henry grew up some more, so that Henry got busier and busier with his duties and Randall studied for hours on end in his bedroom. The robot retreated into a box under Henry's bed, where Henry liked to think it was just sleeping, taking a break.

Randall kept going on his expeditions, further and further away and sometimes all alone. Henry worried about him, but couldn't do anything about it; instead, he vowed to keep the house as clean as he could for Randall's return. Every time Randall left without him, Henry cleaned furiously and waited for him to come back.

Except one day he didn't come back.

The town was thrown into chaos, and Henry felt like life was a rug that had been pulled out from under him. Henry told himself _he'll be back, Master Randall's definitely coming back_, and he believed it—still, that night, he took the robot out of its box, and even though its worn silver edges were hard and sharp, he laid it in bed next to him, for good luck.

On the day Henry left the Ascot household, he took two things of Randall's: one photograph, and the robot.

Henry and the robot moved to the desert so they could look for Randall better. In the tent that would grow into a hotel that would grow into a city, the robot kept silent watch over piles of notes, a paper trail they hoped would lead to a missing friend. And the robot greeted Henry when he came in with more notes, and more dedication, and more and more desperation. It watched him grow up as he searched—from a gangly boy in suspenders, to a young man with a thin beard and more money than he knew what to do with, to a tycoon in a fine suit, gazing out at the world with expressionless eyes. Only in that tent, and in the hotel room the tent would turn into, did Henry ever betray a growing hopelessness. On nights when nothing was going well, he would crawl up the stairs to his sanctuary and slump at his desk, and pick up the robot, and turn it over in his weary hands.

_The three of us will be together again,_ the robot promised. Henry listened to it, and tired as he was, he kept searching.


End file.
